What makes this Anti-#GamerGate’s next great mistake is that they compared gamers to terrorists/ISIS/etc. enough times that people outside of Anti-#GamerGate started believing them in a very literal way. The “gamers” in the episode made ISIS style videos and other nonsense. This Law & Order: SVU episode ran with everything Anti-#GamerGate has said about gamers like a rampaging bull in a china shop. This is dangerous for Anti-#GamerGate because Anti-#GamerGate has lost control of their own narrative. (A few Anti-#GamerGaters even realize this.) One of the things that happened in the episode was that Kotaku, which is solidly SJW/feminist and Anti-#GamerGate, was lumped in with the misogynist terrorist gamers. This is why this is Anti-#GamerGate’s final mistake. They created a narrative where despite being Anti-#GamerGate, they’re still lumped in with the the gamers they hate.

This is a bigger problem for Anti-#GamerGate than just being lumped in with gamers. The episode had Ice-T saying gibberish like, “they’re uploading threats through the dark net!” While that sentence makes no sense, the real problem is that its an attack on online privacy and anonymity. This is the type of thing that will draw the ire of the online rights crowd (with good reason), which adds to one of the previous great mistake that Anti-#GamerGate has been making.

This episode of Law & Order: SVU, like many other of its episodes, is supposed to be “ripped from the headlines”. But there’s a problem with that. When have female game developers or even the Anita Sarkeesians of the world been kidnapped and raped? Never. That’s a glaring difference between the episode and reality. Anti-#GamerGate was more careful about this sort of thing, but the wider media doesn’t care. When people realize that such things are a complete myth, they will question Anti-#GamerGate’s claims of online harassment and death threats and find a complete lack of evidence. They will also find that there has not been a single arrest, much less a single conviction in a court of law. The wider media doesn’t care about maintaining the specifics of #Anti-GamerGate’s narrative, but Anti-#GamerGate has to deal with the fallout of the wider media now controlling its narrative.

What does this have to do with #GamerGate, and why is this one of anti-#GamerGate’s great mistakes? Gawker is a major media outlet opposed to #GamerGate. Like all other anti-#GamerGaters they have been trying to portray gamers as a hate group not that different from the Nazis. Yet, it is anti-#GamerGaters like Gawker that are giving visibility to Nazi propaganda. This has not gone unnoticed:

Anti-#GamerGate has already made three major mistakes. All three of these mistakes had one thing in common. They pushed people who didn’t care about #GamerGate firmly into the #GamerGate camp. Anti-#GamerGate is in the process of making its fourth and fifth major mistakes which will have the same effect.

The fourth major mistake Anti-#GamerGate is making is flooding somewhat related websites with anti-#GamerGate and feminist women in tech propaganda. Slashdot, a website for technology news, is a good example. A while back Slashdot started posting a lot of anti-#GamerGate and feminist women in tech nonsense. Initially, the attitude of the readership at Slashdot agreed with the anti-#GamerGate and feminist position. However, the constant drumbeat of anti-#GamerGate and women in tech propaganda had the effect of reversing the views of the Slashdot readership as can be seen with the comments to Slashdot stories like this one. When anti-#GamerGate talks about #GamerGate or feminist women in tech nonsense, the effect is to generate more #GamerGate supporters.

Anti-#GamerGate’s fifth major mistake is going after archive sites using false DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaints. While this will piss off the owners and backers of archive sites, what anti-#GamerGate is doing is much bigger than that. The DMCA is something that the online rights crowd has been fighting since among other things it allows for this sort of abuse. Most of the online rights crowd either doesn’t care about #GamerGate or believes the feminist lie that it’s all about misogyny. This will cause many of them to get an education and become #GamerGate supporters. It also adds a new angle to the Zoe Quinn situation because she has been using false DMCA complaints to shutdown criticism of her making it that much harder for her supporters to use the lie that Zoe Quinn is a victim of misogynerds.

What is happening with both of these major mistakes is that anti-#GamerGate and feminists are pushing into adjacent communities who either were neutral or supported them and turning many members of those communities hostile to them. They should stop doing this since the effect is the same each time they do it, but they can’t seem to help themselves.

Until now anti-#GamerGate has made two major mistakes. The first was censoring any discussion about the Zoe Quinn affair. Instead of shutting down discussion about Zoe Quinn, it caused more people to look at the whole thing. It was another example of the Streisand Effect in action.

The second major mistake anti-#GamerGate made was all the “Gamers Are Dead” articles that all appeared within a day of each other. Gamers who didn’t care about the Zoe Quinn saga started wondering why they were getting attacked by the gaming press. Many of them ended up joining #GamerGate.

A common theme of these two major mistakes is that they pushed people who didn’t care about #GamerGate firmly into the #GamerGate camp. Now, anti-#GamerGate has made a third major mistake by supporting Target Australia and KMart Australia’s ban of Grand Theft Auto V from their stores. This may be the worst mistake anti-#GamerGate has made so far. This is something that Jack Thompson was never able to successfully accomplish.

This mistake will have several effects. First, more people will become pro-#GamerGate. A common thing we have heard from anti-#GamerGate is that feminists and SJWs don’t want to take anyone’s games away. That has been proven to be a total lie. Second, gaming journalism’s opposition to Jack Thompson has been shown to be not about principle but about Thompson’s Christianity and social conservatism. Gaming journalists are defending Target Australia’s actionsbecause it was demanded by women. Effectively, what they are saying is that censorship is fine as long as it is demanded by women. Third, this attacks the bottom line of the AAA game publishers. The AAA game publishers have understandingly stayed out of #GamerGate until now. Both the action of banning a AAA game from retailers and gaming journalism’s defense of the bans will provoke a reaction from the AAA game publishers because it now affects their income.

I expect more of these mistakes from anti-#GamerGate in the future. They can’t stop so they will piss off more and more people. All #GamerGate has to do to win is just keep going.